Drizzt
Member
Sunday Tasmanian (Australia)
April 27, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 683 words
HEADLINE: Gun facts speak for themselves
BYLINE: DANIELLE WOOD
BODY:
IN visiting Californian Fulbright Fellow Ellen Boneparth's research paper into the impact of gun control laws in Australia, this fact is underlined:
Martin Bryant's 1996 killing spree which left 35 dead and another 19 injured precipitated a ban on semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns and a gun buy-back scheme which saw more than 643,000 guns handed in.
In Australia, between 1987 and 1996, 100 people were killed in mass killings, Dr Boneparth said. But since 1996, this country has not seen a mass killing -- usually defined, Dr Boneparth said, by the deaths of four or more people.
"This is not to claim there will never be another massacre, but the likelihood of mass killings seems significantly reduced," she argues.
As the seventh anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre approaches tomorrow, Dr Boneparth is releasing her findings.
She has spent the past few months at the University of Sydney trawling through this country's institutional records in search of data on the impact of the landmark 1996 gun control laws.
She wears her political colours openly -- she is a gun-control advocate, and one of the so-called Million Moms who marched through US cities in 2000 campaigning for sensible gun laws.
Dr Boneparth says there are many factors that contribute to the incidence of gun-related crime, including poverty, drug usage and law enforcement as well as legislative gun control.
But, she says, when you compare gun-related crime rates in the US, where gun laws are looser and less uniform across the states, with Australia, which has since 1996 had relatively uniform legislation, the figures are stark.
In Australia 25 per cent of homes have a gun, in the US it's 40 per cent. Firearm homicide compares at three per million to 14 per million, and firearm suicide at 13 per million in Australia to 64 per million in the US. And for most other crimes, the rates are about the same, Dr Boneparth said.
"This is prima facie evidence that guns are a main source of the problem," she says. "Australia, by banning certain categories of guns and instituting relatively uniform national laws, has adopted preventative measures that are having an effect on decreasing gun violence.
"US governments have been either unable or unwilling to do the same. US gun control policies at the state and local level are eclipsed by national failure to achieve uniform policy.
"With the exception of educational efforts, current US approaches to confront gun violence -- law enforcement and litigation -- are more reactive than preventative."
Some of the most important figures Dr Boneparth is working with come from the Australian Institute of Criminology. These figures have enabled her to identify a number of trend lines which show that while homicides, suicides and robberies using firearms are on the decrease in Australia, homicides and suicides using hand-guns are on the increase.
An incident at Monash University in October last year saw two people killed and five others injured by a man using a semi-automatic hand-gun. That man, says Boneparth, was a licensed gun owner, member of a shooting club and the owner of seven hand-guns.
This event precipitated discussion about hand-gun control, which is set to be the next major issue in the Australian gun control debate.
Dr Boneparth's view is that the Australian government's response to the hand-gun issue -- with the states supposedly aiming to bring new legislation by July 1 this year -- doesn't go far enough.
"While Australia has made admirable strides in decreasing gun violence, compromise is currently the name of the game," she writes.
Tasmanian Firearm Owners Association president John Green said the shortcoming in Dr Boneparth's research was that it doesn't break firearm crime down into crimes committed with registered guns and by licensed shooters and those committed with unregistered guns by unlicensed shooters.
"Taking guns off law-abiding citizens will not make the community safer because not enough is being done about the criminal element," he said.
April 27, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 683 words
HEADLINE: Gun facts speak for themselves
BYLINE: DANIELLE WOOD
BODY:
IN visiting Californian Fulbright Fellow Ellen Boneparth's research paper into the impact of gun control laws in Australia, this fact is underlined:
Martin Bryant's 1996 killing spree which left 35 dead and another 19 injured precipitated a ban on semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns and a gun buy-back scheme which saw more than 643,000 guns handed in.
In Australia, between 1987 and 1996, 100 people were killed in mass killings, Dr Boneparth said. But since 1996, this country has not seen a mass killing -- usually defined, Dr Boneparth said, by the deaths of four or more people.
"This is not to claim there will never be another massacre, but the likelihood of mass killings seems significantly reduced," she argues.
As the seventh anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre approaches tomorrow, Dr Boneparth is releasing her findings.
She has spent the past few months at the University of Sydney trawling through this country's institutional records in search of data on the impact of the landmark 1996 gun control laws.
She wears her political colours openly -- she is a gun-control advocate, and one of the so-called Million Moms who marched through US cities in 2000 campaigning for sensible gun laws.
Dr Boneparth says there are many factors that contribute to the incidence of gun-related crime, including poverty, drug usage and law enforcement as well as legislative gun control.
But, she says, when you compare gun-related crime rates in the US, where gun laws are looser and less uniform across the states, with Australia, which has since 1996 had relatively uniform legislation, the figures are stark.
In Australia 25 per cent of homes have a gun, in the US it's 40 per cent. Firearm homicide compares at three per million to 14 per million, and firearm suicide at 13 per million in Australia to 64 per million in the US. And for most other crimes, the rates are about the same, Dr Boneparth said.
"This is prima facie evidence that guns are a main source of the problem," she says. "Australia, by banning certain categories of guns and instituting relatively uniform national laws, has adopted preventative measures that are having an effect on decreasing gun violence.
"US governments have been either unable or unwilling to do the same. US gun control policies at the state and local level are eclipsed by national failure to achieve uniform policy.
"With the exception of educational efforts, current US approaches to confront gun violence -- law enforcement and litigation -- are more reactive than preventative."
Some of the most important figures Dr Boneparth is working with come from the Australian Institute of Criminology. These figures have enabled her to identify a number of trend lines which show that while homicides, suicides and robberies using firearms are on the decrease in Australia, homicides and suicides using hand-guns are on the increase.
An incident at Monash University in October last year saw two people killed and five others injured by a man using a semi-automatic hand-gun. That man, says Boneparth, was a licensed gun owner, member of a shooting club and the owner of seven hand-guns.
This event precipitated discussion about hand-gun control, which is set to be the next major issue in the Australian gun control debate.
Dr Boneparth's view is that the Australian government's response to the hand-gun issue -- with the states supposedly aiming to bring new legislation by July 1 this year -- doesn't go far enough.
"While Australia has made admirable strides in decreasing gun violence, compromise is currently the name of the game," she writes.
Tasmanian Firearm Owners Association president John Green said the shortcoming in Dr Boneparth's research was that it doesn't break firearm crime down into crimes committed with registered guns and by licensed shooters and those committed with unregistered guns by unlicensed shooters.
"Taking guns off law-abiding citizens will not make the community safer because not enough is being done about the criminal element," he said.
